Sarah Moore GrimkéReseñas

Sarah Grimké was a pioneering figure in both the abolitionist and the women's rights movements, preceding and inspiring Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. I read the letters in excerpt, but not all of the other essays in this collection. I quite appreciate her rational style and excellent delivery. She's a little spicy too and I like it. I'm not surprised she did well on the lecture circuit.
It's interesting to hear a biblical defense of gender equality. I've never belonged to a church and my experience with other's biblical explanations has not generally been good.
It is heartening if sometimes sad to hear someone explain many of the same points we still have to assert today. From general humanity and equality of spirit and intellectual capacity, to the falsity of 'protective' patriarchy, to the particulars of imposed speech and behavior patterns, domestic drudgery; the difference between sex and taught gender - she even decries 'thoughts and prayers' in a call to activism.
Though some sections are clearly dated and rely on second-hand reports, it's a worthwhile read and often relevant.
It is always useful to be reminded not to excuse people their misogyny due to their age or the era they came from. Turns out women were people back then, too.

The Feminist Thought of Sarah Grimke. edited by Gerda Lerner, is an extremely interesting collection of letters and a few manuscripts of pamphlets or essays written by Sarah Grimke (1792-1873). Editor Gerda Lerner, an early women’s history historian, had written a biography of Sarah and Angelina Grimke in the 1960s. Approximately thirty years later, she realized that Sarah Grimke, who was overshadowed by Angelina as a speaker, was an important person in her own right as an early feminist thinker, and collected and published many of Sarah’s feminist writings. Lerner shows that Sarah Grimke's feminist writing predates some of the ideas found in early women's conventions including the 1848 Seneca Falls (N.Y.) Women's Rights Convention. Lerner states "I see Sarah Grimke not only as the first woman to write a coherent feminist argument in the United States, but also as a major feminist thinker" (p. 5).

Lerner both provides an overall introduction to the Grimke sisters’ lives and writings, with an emphasis on Sarah, and explains the significance of each document in the book. Lerner also added 3 of her own essays -- one describing how she determined that an essay attributed to Angelina was almost certainly written by Sarah, and two discussing women's roles in the antislavery movement. I personally think that the antislavery movement articles do not belong in this book which is about Sarah's philosophy of feminism. Also, I’m disappointed that Ms. Lerner did not include Sarah’s "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women", a very important work, which Lerner excluded since it had been published elsewhere.

Highly recommended to feminist scholars.

(Grimke should have an acute accent over the e, which I did not know how to make in this database.)